I turned on him in a fury. “What do you want, the ghost of Peter Dobrynin dancing across the room? Or do you want me shivering in a corner, waiting for the killer, knowing that my life and yours are at risk? Or maybe you want the police here backing me up! Just what do you want?”
“Calm down, will you? I was just pulling your leg a little!”
The phone rang. I held Tony back until the third ring. I closed Madame Bovary and told him, “Pick it up now, Tony. Remember, say exactly what I told you to.”
Tony answered the phone, following my instructions to the letter. When he hung up, he looked pale.
“Damn,” he said hoarsely. “You were right. She’s on her way over right now. With the money. Who would ever figure it. Five grand—for what? A nonexistent cat? Who is this cat?”
“Did you recognize the voice, Tony?”
“No. She had an accent. I never believed in a million years we would get any kind of call. Never.”
“You ought to trust your Aunt Alice,” I said, with no small touch of malice.
“Now what?” he asked. For the first time, he appeared to be a bit frightened. My observation made me realize that I, too, and also for the first time, was a bit frightened.
I picked up the unhappy Bushy and deposited him once more in the carrier. Then I placed the carrier on the bed.
“Okay, Tony. Here’s the next part of the plan. When your visitor enters, just show her the carrier. Say you’ve got A.P.S. inside there. Do not open the box until you’ve got the money in your hands. If it’s cash, count it. If it’s a check, make sure it’s made out the way I said. I’m going to be waiting in the bathroom. Understand all that?”
“Yes. Then what do I do?”
“Don’t worry about that. It’ll all work out.”
I walked into the bathroom and turned off the light. I left the door open just a crack. It was chilly in there.
My eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness; I could see the shiny white shower curtain. It was drawn across the tub as though someone were in there showering. I felt the urge to take a peek, but of course I knew no one was there.
The darkness and the waiting began to oppress me. I had the strangest sense that I was about to go onstage. It was the old actor’s nightmare: walking onstage totally unprepared . . . no idea what the play is . . . what your role is . . . who the other players are . . . no memory . . . struck dumb.
“Come in.”
It was Tony’s voice. I almost panicked. Why hadn’t I heard the knock on the door? Perhaps it had been too soft. But that had been Tony’s voice. I pressed my ear up to the slit of space between the door and the jamb. I heard movement in the outer room. I heard a voice that didn’t belong to Tony. I heard the words “Anna Pavlova Smith.”
Then I heard Basillio say distinctly, “Before we go any further, let me see the money.”
No sound. Then a burst of activity. Mumbled words. A shuffle of feet. I heard the rustle of paper. Was money being exchanged? Counted? I heard Tony’s footfalls heading over to the floor lamp. Maybe he was inspecting the check.
It was time for me to show myself. I had waited this long only because it was important for the money to have changed hands.
I strode out of the dark room and shut—no, slammed—the door behind me.
A small, handsome black woman stood near the bed. She stared at me with horrified eyes. “Why are you here?” she asked, but instead of waiting for an answer she ran for the door.
“Tony!” I screamed out.
He lurched toward the door, slamming into it and sending our visitor reeling to one side.
“Please,” I said, “just stay where you are! No one is going to hurt you!”
The woman was breathing hard, but she remained still.
I turned to Tony, who was waving the check at me. “I don’t think we were all properly introduced the last time,” I said, looking first at him and then at the woman. “Tony, do you remember Lucia Maury’s nurse?”
I walked to the bed and, as the saying goes, let the cat out of the bag. “This isn’t the one you were sent to fetch,” I said to the woman. Then I sat down on the bed, suddenly exhausted.
Tony sat beside me, the check still in his hand. “Are you ready to tell me what’s happening now?”
“It’s already happened,” I said wearily. “We’re just doing the cleaning up. Making sure everyone pays his own piper.
“You see, a number of years ago, Lucia Maury fell in love with a great dancer. She knew she was just one in a long line of his lovers, but to her that didn’t matter. She loved him very much. In fact, the only thing she loved as much was her cat, a Maine coon named Splat.
“The dancer had a major drinking problem. And one of his eccentricities was to take animals and dress them outlandishly, then take them along with him on his drinking sprees. He thought it was cute. While he was carrying on the affair with Lucia, her cat became one of his companions. For some crazy reason of his own, he decided to call the cat “Anna Pavlova Smith”—even though Splat was a male. Lucia begged him not to take the cat out of her apartment, but he did it anyway. He did it and he kept doing it, maybe even without her knowledge sometimes. Then, the worst possible thing happened. On one of his pub crawls, he lost sight of Anna Pavlova Smith. The cat wandered off and entered the world of the lost and lonely. Lucia searched the streets, posted notices, offered rewards for the return of the cat. Dobrynin searched the shelters. But no, poor Splat was gone. And Lucia rightly blamed the dancer.
“She broke off the affair. And she told everyone that Splat had died from an illness. But she never believed he was dead. She continued to look for him. Years passed. Her hatred of Dobrynin grew. After he became a derelict—after, presumably, he’d had a series of breakdowns—he started contacting her again. This only reinforced her hatred of him, and soon that hatred became all-consuming.
“As for Dobrynin, by then calling himself ‘Lenny,’ he still recognized his guilt—even in his psychosis. And eventually his guilt became a part of the psychosis. He kept searching for the cat. He began to feed strays all over the city, hoping that Anna Pavlova Smith might be among them. For him, the missing cat had become an obsession. As his madness grew, the cat grew into a delusional monster who would someday pay him back for his crime.
“In fact, though, it was Lucia who paid him back . . . who lured him to Lincoln Center and shot him there on that balcony. And then, in an act of utter contempt for his art, for his dancing feet, removed his shoes and left him there to die barefoot, unprotected, as he had allowed Splat to vanish into the cold city.
“And then there was one final act of vengeance. She paid someone—very likely one of the homeless people who camp around Lincoln Center—to paint the name on the hearse that would carry Peter Dobrynin to his grave. As if Dobrynin would know the reason for his own funeral. There is no doubt in my mind that Lucia Maury is as mad as her lover ever was.”
“But what about Basil?” Tony interjected. “In his confession he said that Vol Teak planned the murder.”
“No, Tony. Not exactly. He said he knew nothing about the murder itself—only that Vol Teak had paid him to bring Lenny to the theater. But the point is, given the things Frank Brodsky had threatened him with, Basil would have said anything. He told us what we wanted to hear.”
By this time, the nurse had taken a seat and was listening to the wrap-up as closely as Tony was. He got up and poured water for each of us.
“When did you figure all this out? How long have you been sitting on it?”
“Not that long. It gathered its own momentum. But it was that nightmarish sketch of the cat made by Dobrynin that helped me put it all together—the specter of a monster cat tracking him, the feeding of the stray cats with Russian food, his bare feet.”
“I saw the cat picture in the hospital too,” Tony said. “I didn’t notice anything special about it, other than its complete craziness.”
“Neither did I, at first. But then I realized that
Dobrynin had drawn his rendition of a Maine coon cat. And Lucia’s Splat was such a breed—the same as Bushy.”
Tony looked over at the silent nurse, who visibly tensed when he asked, “What are we going to do about. . . her?”
I sighed heavily. “I’m really sorry,” I said, addressing the nurse directly, “but we’re going to need you, when we take the check to the detective who arrested Lucia in the first place.” I turned back to Tony. “The one who was forced to release her, thanks to our brilliant work.”
“So much for genius,” he said.
Bushy was rubbing himself against the nurse’s legs, soliciting admiration. But he didn’t get any—the nurse seemed to have drifted off to some faraway place.
Chapter 25
It was one o’clock in the morning when Tony, the Haitian nurse (Madeline, by name), and I showed up unannounced on the doorstep of Frank Brodsky.
I had originally planned to contact the police directly, but I realized that I owed my employer an explanation first, at the very least. And I entertained the hope that I could leave it to him to make the presentation to the police, to tie all the loose ends together.
He greeted us in his bathrobe. Clearly we had roused him from sleep, but he was ever the gentleman, leading us all up the stairs to his small, elegant conference room. He apologized that he could offer us no coffee, but he went to great effort to provide us with water in glasses of sparkling crystal.
Tony, Madeline, and I sat down at the table. Frank Brodsky remained standing.
I began to tell my story in detail, culminating with the trap which had caught Madeline and which, with all other evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, clearly revealed that Lucia Maury had indeed murdered Peter Dobrynin.
The lawyer didn’t interrupt once. From time to time he circled the table, but he never sat and he never spoke.
By the time I’d finished my recitation it was a little after two in the morning. I drank some water and waited.
For the longest time Brodsky didn’t respond to what I had said. He inspected one of his paintings, then some scuff marks on a table leg, then a small mark on the ceiling. Finally he sat down wearily in his usual chair at the head of the long, lovely table.
“You look very tired, Miss Nestleton,” he said.
“It has been a long night,” I admitted.
He looked at Tony and Madeline. “You all look tired,” he said.
Again there was that silence; only this time it was making me distinctly uncomfortable. Why hadn’t he congratulated me? Where was his joy at hearing that this ugly murder had finally been solved? Where, in fact, was his appreciation for what I had accomplished?
He smiled at me broadly, kindly, as if my fatigue were causing him real concern.
“I have a very good idea,” he said. He paused. “Do you want to hear my idea?”
“Of course,” I answered. But then he looked at Tony and Madeline. He wanted them to hear his idea also. They made no response, which was enough for him.
“I think,” he said, “that you should stay here a little while and rest up. There is room for all of you to take a nap. Then you should all take a cab home at my expense, have a good meal at my expense, and go to sleep. In the morning, when you wake up, you should have some fresh orange juice. And then just forget everything you’ve told me this evening.”
I stared at him dumbly. Was he joking? Was this his idea of a folksy joke? Then I realized that he was quite serious. I looked at Tony. He looked at me, perplexed. I looked at Madeline. Her eyes were fixed on a painting hung high on a wall.
My response to his suggestion was nakedly venomous: “Didn’t you hear what I just told you, Mr. Brodsky? Weren’t you listening? Perhaps I can recite the whole story again when you’re fully awake.”
He smiled. “Ah, Miss Nestleton, I heard every word you said. Every word. I paid close attention. But I see you are not going to take me up on my suggestion. I see you are here, in a sense, demanding some kind of action.”
He shook his head from side to side, slowly and sadly.
“Doesn’t it strike you as strange, Miss Nestleton, that the same woman I hired as a criminal investigator to clear Lucia Maury’s name has ended up dirtying it? As bizarre, Miss Nestleton, that you were hired to help defend Lucia Maury but seem to have spent all your time and energy—considerable energy, I might add—trying to convict Lucia Maury?”
“What precisely are you saying, Mr. Brodsky?”
“Nothing very profound. It just seems to me that you are engaged in an odd form of betrayal.”
“Betrayal? How dare you accuse me of that! Lucia Maury is my friend, but I hired on to conduct an objective investigation!”
My fury subsided as quickly as it had erupted. In its place came a deadening realization: The lawyer was absolutely right. I was handing Lucia over to the hangman. It just hadn’t dawned on me to characterize this as “betrayal.” I had simply followed one lead after another. I had sought the truth. I had pursued a murderer. Yet, when all was said and done, I would have to accuse Lucia Maury. But there was no other way!
“Perhaps,” I finally said to him, “the difference between you and me is that I can’t be bought, intellectually.” It was a cruel thing to say, and a flash of hatred and anger creased his usually cherubic face. Then he smiled, inclined his head as if I had scored a point, and folded his hands in front of him.
“Well, Miss Nestleton, we shouldn’t get into personalities. So let us get back to reason. You come here at one in the morning with an outlandish, unproven, unsubstantiated tale about my client, and you expect me to do something about it. This tale you told me contradicts a signed confession, freely given, which clearly names Vol Teak as the individual who shot and killed Peter Dobrynin. May I remind you that Vol Teak had a rational motive for murder: blackmail. According to the police and the district attorney, this case is closed. According to all rules of evidence and procedure, this case is closed. According to all logic, this case is closed.”
Then Tony said: “That confession was coerced.”
“You mean I beat Basil?” Mr. Brodsky asked, sarcastically.
“You did worse than that! Basil is a frightened, borderline, strung-out street addict. I don’t think he had any idea what his life was twenty-four hours earlier. You planted the diamonds on him, said they were from a beaten diamond dealer, and he was crazed enough to believe that he did it. Hell, for people like Basil it doesn’t matter if they really committed a crime; if the police believe they did it, then they did it! You hustled him, Mr. Brodsky. You abused him! You terrorized the poor bastard. So he told you what you wanted to hear. And none of us complained, because we thought we knew that Vol Teak was guilty. But now we know something else. And the case against Vol Teak is airtight only for as long as Basil’s phony confession holds up. Which may be only another five minutes!”
Tony paused, angry, his voice breaking. It was obvious that Basil’s confession and the lawyer’s part in it had been rankling for a long time.
Frank Brodsky didn’t respond. He poured himself a few sips of water, then looked around expansively. He said something in French to Madeline, who just nodded. It dawned on me that for all I knew it might have been Frank Brodsky who had originally obtained the Haitian nurse for Lucia.
“I think, Miss Nestleton,” he finally said, pushing the water glass along the table as if it were a child’s toy, “I am going to have to reveal some confidences you have shared with me.” I had no idea what he could mean.
“My past isn’t so mysterious, though I’d like to think it is,” I replied good-humoredly, seeing as he seemed ready to reveal some desperate act I’d once committed.
But he didn’t smile. He said: “You once told me, Miss Nestleton, that you are friendly with a Detective Rothwax of the NYPD. I believe you also told me that you both worked together some time back in a special investigative unit, called RETRO, I believe.”
“Well,” I replied gingerly, not sure where this was heading, “tha
t’s true.”
He smiled. “I hope you won’t be angry with me, Miss Nestleton, but I took the liberty some time ago of contacting this detective, although he wasn’t easy to find. I just wanted his evaluation of you. After all, Miss Nestleton, since I was spending money to hire you, I thought it wise to get an outside evaluation. In other words, when you introduced me to him just before Basil confessed, we had already met secretly.”
He looked around at all of us before he proceeded.
“Detective Rothwax shared with me his nickname for you: ‘Cat Woman.’ Naturally, when I heard this I was curious as to the origin of such a strange name for so beautiful and intelligent a woman as yourself, Miss Nestleton.”
He seemed to wait for affirmation from the assembled that I was, indeed, beautiful and intelligent. Then he continued.
“Detective Rothwax explained that while you were a crackerjack investigator—yes, I remember that he did use that charming old-fashioned word, ‘crackerjack’—you were obsessed with things feline. To such an extent, Detective Rothwax said, that once in a while you enter a fantasy world that has nothing at all to do with real crimes committed by real people in the real world.”
I stood up in a rage. My body was trembling. I literally shouted at the lawyer: “Obsession? Fantasy? Real?”
I looked at Tony. “Give me that check!” He reached into his pocket, pulled out the folded check, and handed it to me.
Holding the check out in front of Brodsky so that he could clearly see it, I shouted: “Is this a fantasy? Is this an obsession? Look at it, Mr. Brodsky! Look at it! It is made out to cash! It is signed by Lucia Maury! It is in payment for the return of a Maine coon cat called ‘Anna Pavlova Smith,’ better known as ‘Splat’! And Lucia gave this check to Madeline last night to deliver to a hotel room, because an ad had been placed in the paper saying that someone had found Anna Pavlova Smith—the cat that a drunk Peter Dobrynin took barhopping and lost! The cat whose loss Lucia Maury eventually avenged by putting a bullet hole in the dancer’s forehead on Christmas Eve, after she had given him a ticket to The Nutcracker!”
A Cat in the Wings: Page 16